Divy App Review: Swinging From The Fences With Investing

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In high school, I won a lot of tennis matches. I hoped to play college tennis. At least, I hoped to play college tennis until I started playing matches against other aspiring collegiate tennis players.

You see, ordinary tennis players win matches by returning the ball more times than their opponent. College tennis players win matches by shoving the ball down their opponent’s throat. Needless to say, I ran track in college. However, even as an ordinary tennis player, I relish the delicious experience of smashing a ball so hard and so accurately that my opponent didn’t even go after the shot.

When I think about investing, I draw on my tennis experience. For ordinary investors like me, safety is the way to victory. That’s why most of my portfolio includes broad-based equity index funds.

However, sometimes I’m willing to take on extra risk for the chance that I’ll enjoy the delicious reward of outperformance. That is to say, a small section of my portfolio includes stocks that I actively trade.

If you want to actively manage a small portion of your portfolio, the Divy App should be a brokerage for you to consider. They allow you to buy fractional shares of stocks for as little as ten cents.

The fractional share concept paired with super low commissions make Divy appropriate for anyone who hopes to manage a portfolio with as little as $10. Here’s what you need to know about Divy.

What’s A Fractional Share?

Imagine that you own one share of stock in a company. What do you own? You own the right to a given percentage of the company’s dividends when they are issued. You also get to share in the profits in the form of increased share prices.

Usually, investors must own at least one full share of a company. However, fractional shares make it possible to own as little as $10 of a company. A fractional share means you own a partial share. If a stock trades for $100, and you buy a $10 fractional share, you own 10% of one share.

You’re entitled to one-tenth of the future dividends awarded to that share, and you’ll get to participate in the upward price growth. If you sell the stock when it trades for $200, you’ll get $20 for your share of the stock.

Right now, Berkshire Hathaway is trading at over $245,000 per share. If you want to buy some of Warren Buffett’s genius, you can use the Divy App to buy .0041% of a share of BRK.A for $10.

High individual share prices used to block small investors from the market. Today, fractional shares make it possible for people with tiny portfolios to invest in individual companies.

What Does Divy Charge For Their Service?

You’ll pay a trading fee of 1% of your total trade, up to a maximum of $1.00. Plus, you won’t pay account maintenance fees or fund transfer fees. Low fees, mean that you’ll keep more money invested. You can check out Divy’s fee schedule here. As long as you do everything electronically, you won’t pay much for the service at all.

You must trade at least $10 worth of stock at a time, but there is no maximum trade. There are also no account minimums.

Why I Love The Divy App

I think Divy levels the playing field for small investors in a way that other stock brokers can’t. Fractional shares are a technology that actually helps small investors who are getting started. The super-low transaction costs mean that learning to manage a portfolio comes at a low cost.

The Divy App also makes it easy to get news and information about stocks in your portfolio. If you’re looking for new investing ideas or trying to figure out how a company will perform in the future, Divy will help you learn all you can.

I also like that Divy makes it easy to buy a share of stock right from their news feed. Once a stock is in your cart, you buy it just like you’re checking out from Amazon. In my opinion, shopping for stocks is a far better vice than shopping for gadgets.

Divy also introduces a fun social element. You can see how your friends and family invest. They also provide companies that align with important social memes. For example, the Netflix and Chill Motif has stocks for Netflix, Kraft, Match Group, Domino’s and more.

If you want to actively manage a small part of your portfolio, I think Divy is a great app for you.

Where Divy App Falls Short

Divy makes it easy to invest, but I think the app has a fundamental design flaw that makes it hard to stay invested. You can receive alerts when your share prices fall. You can always see what stocks perform better than yours.

This is why I’m thankful that Divy doesn’t allow investors to invest through retirement vehicles like an IRA right now. Some investors might see the lack of retirement accounts as a drawback, but I count that as a plus right now. The platform is simply focused too much on short-term stock selection to make it appropriate for long term investing.

Even the portfolio analysis tools push your focus towards individual stocks rather than portfolio construction. You can see the change in your portfolio’s value over time, total returns and more. However, you can’t dig into your asset allocation the way you can with tools like Personal Capital or DIY.Fund.

Final Thoughts On Divy

The low fees and fractional shares concepts had me at hello. I give a huge thumbs up to Divy, and I’m excited about the work they’re doing. That said, I think that savvy investors will only put a small portion of their overall net assets into Divy.

It’s a platform that allows little investors to swing for the fences. That’s appropriate for a small part of your portfolio, but not for the whole thing.

Right now Divy is in their Beta testing phase. They plan to release the app to the general public in the next few months. In between now and then, I recommend putting yourself on their waiting list. This is an excellent platform for aspiring individual stock investors.

Have you ever heard of the Divy App? Do you invest with fractional shares?

Divy Investing Review

Commission & Fees - 90

Customer Service - 80

Ease Of Use - 60

Tools & Resources - 60

Investment Options - 90

Specialty Services - 60

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Summary

Divy is an online investing platform that allows users to buy fractional shares for active investors.

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About Robert Farrington

Robert Farrington is America's Millennial Money Expert, and the founder of The College Investor, a personal finance site dedicated to helping millennials escape student loan debt to start investing and building wealth for the future. You can learn more about him here.

One of his favorite tools is Personal Capital, which enables him to manage his finances in just 15-minutes each month. Best of all - it's free!

He is also diversifying his investment portfolio by adding a little bit of real estate. But not rental homes, because he doesn't want a second job, it's diversified small investments in a mix of properties through Fundrise. Worth a look if you're looking for a low dollar way to invest in real estate.

Comments

As a former high school player you are so dead on! I remember being in a tournament against a guy fresh off a college team, he was good but no where near pro level. Anyway I was only average in high school and knew there was no hope against him. He literally came off the ground with both feet on almost every shot he hit. So the very first game I decided to swing away and his first three rocket serves I amazingly connected with and hit smoking winners off of. He stood there down love-forty, looking at this forty something guy who was killing it and shook his head and proceeded to beat me 6-0,6-0. I barely got another point.